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[atowncalledtreffy]

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[draculabutbackwards]

"I absolutely fucking am not. That suggests a degree of... reasonable competence." He has no earthly idea what he's doing. Obviously that's disqualifying.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“Having met a country’s worth of fathers, I think you could do far worse.” He’s laughing. Imagining Papa Alucard.

“Look, you big fuck-off soft-heart: nobody is born knowing how to be a dad. They learn. You’ll learn too.”

[draculabutbackwards]

That... doesn't sound right, but he can't easily put his finger on why. He's beginning to flag again. Still worried, but he has an intact if not particularly happy Trevor at his shoulder, and the adrenaline isn't flowing anymore. "You fuck off." That doesn't even make sense. "And what sort of meetings were these, incidentally? Did you stop and ask about their kids before every barfight?" Yeah, sleepy Alucard is running a little low on material.

[atowncalledtreffy]

He snorts, and gets up to make the couch up for the two of them. Alucard sleeps here tonight.

“No, but I did have every curious kid under ten wondering why the fuck a stranger was in their remote village come up to pester me with questions.” He points out, and throws a few pillows onto the pull-out bed.

“And some of them had bruises on their faces or arms in the shape of handprints. You’re not going to hit them: you’re already a better father to a lot of them, I bet. When the world goes to shit, people need to feel they have control over some small part of their lives so they don’t end up going insane from helplessness. More often than not, they hit their kids. Or worse.”

He says it matter of factly.

“Here.” He throws a blanket over Adrian’s legs.

[draculabutbackwards]

It's not exactly news. His mother was a doctor. He heard things, from her and sometimes from the patients themselves, if they didn't care about being overheard by the doctor's odd, silent child. He was as much one of his mother's tools as anything in her black bag, a pair of steady hands and a useful prop that kept her from being too odd.

But Belmont certainly puts it differently than his mother would have. Already tired and drained, he discards several replies that feel simply inadequate and winds up just focusing on the blanket. Not the first time he's frozen in the face of a difficult discussion. "There enough of these? I mean, I thermoregulate a lot better than you." He bends down to begin the rather laborious process of unlacing his boots.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“I don’t know what the fuck that word means.” He says cheerfully, and kicks off his boots. “But if you’re worried about freezing, this ship on its coldest nights has been warmer than the wagon on its warmest. I wake up thinking I’m in the desert some nights.”

He drops into bed beside Adrian and turns the conversation back to what they were talking about.

“Anyway. If you’re worried about scarring then for life, don’t be. Kids are insanely resilient little shits. Show them that famed hospitality your parents are known for.”

[draculabutbackwards]

He probably can't scar them worse than waves of night creatures already have, but that doesn't strike quite the right note. Adrian pulls the blanket up around his shoulders and folds his knees to his chest, the general pointiness of his lanky frame making the motion more like stowing a pocket knife than anything that could be considered curling. "I've put them in the big bedroom and turned it into sort of an encampment. Stocked it with what survived of my own at that age. And then I came here, so when I get back with no time having passed in theory, I'll hopefully have... some kind of actual plan."

[atowncalledtreffy]

A snort.

“You think this place is going to teach you proper parenting?” He asks, and then backtracks.

“Shit, it might. Your dad’s here.”

[draculabutbackwards]

"Ah... touchy subject." Since they still haven't quite gotten over the way Adrian stuck his foot in his mouth saying Dracula didn't belong anywhere near that village. It's still true, but he knows it wasn't exactly a diplomatic delivery. And even the way things hang between them, forgiven but not forgotten... "I was thinking more about time than consulting expertise." He settles his chin on his knees, fighting a yawn.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“Oh. Sorry.” He won’t go into that, out of respect for Adrian.

Trevor drops down on the other side of the bed, flat on his back and arms propped up under his head.

“What’re you worried about time for?”

[draculabutbackwards]

Adrian manages a wan smile in his direction. He wouldn't exactly mind talking about it with anyone else, but as much as he admires the fragile peace Trevor and his father have built, he can't ask a fucking Belmont to listen to him whine about preserving Dracula's feelings.

"More... aware of it. Things were a bit of a mess when I left. The opportunity to close the door on night creatures and the promise that I'd be able to come back without losing any were too good to pass up, but the castle's a shambles, the bodies we have are hardly in the ground..." Sypha's a wreck, but saying that seems cruel. Belatedly, Adrian gingerly lowers himself to the bed, looking painfully aware of every motion.

[atowncalledtreffy]

He nods a little. Sympathetic. It feels like a lot: must feel like too much for Adrian to handle.

“Well. Uh. If I were there, I’d just. I don’t know if you’d have time to bury them before they start to rot so you might want to focus on cutting down some trees to make a pyre. Or dig a plague pit, you probably don’t have the manpower for that number of bodies. Plus, it’s no longer winter, isn’t it? Better get them taken care of first, unless the castle looks like one faint breath would knock it over.”

Fuck, it might. He didn’t get a chance to see what his big fight with Death did to the castle.

[draculabutbackwards]

"It's not that bad, and there's plenty of living space that's quite structurally sound as long as one isn't picky." He shakes his head. "Shelter and supplies are our only solid assets. And we'll do what we can for the dead. It's the living I'm more worried about." Excepting, of course, the dead man next to him, who he will drag back kicking and screaming if he has to, even if at the moment Adrian has his arms sort of awkwardly wrapped around himself because he's not terribly good at knowing how to share space.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“Shelter and supplies are amazing assets. You’ve also got you. What’s so scary about the living?”

He’s curious and nonjudgmental. Trevor is going to fight Adrian like a demon possessed if he tries forcing him to come back, but for now he doesn’t mind acting like a consultant.

And for the love of god, Adrian. Trevor grunts, rolling over to eye him.

“Are you going to sleep like that all night?”

[draculabutbackwards]

"I'm probably not really going to sleep," he says honestly. He doesn't, much. It's a struggle to get there and a long road back, leaving aside the relative weirdness of not knowing where to put his hands. Rest is as close as he gets. And that part is a bit nicer with company than with the walls of a stone coffin on either side.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“Come here. You look like you don’t want to accidentally roll into me and get human shit on you. And I know I don’t smell bad, the showers here are a godsend.”

He grumbles and rolls on his side, staring at Adrian.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

[draculabutbackwards]

He doesn't move. Or bother to point out that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder a few minutes ago. That's bait. "It's rather a big question, don't you think? Moving them to the castle seemed to be the only option at the time, but that makes everything that's happened since my responsibility. It's just a lot of people with a lot of wounds."

[atowncalledtreffy]

“I don’t think anyone’s looking to you for more than a place to stay while they lick their wounds.” He points out, sleepy and reasonable.

“Anyway. You have Sypha, she’ll know what to do. You should have seen her at Targoviste, shouting grown men down because they were building their toilets too close to the food and water.”

[draculabutbackwards]

"Well, good. That's asinine." Adrian does finally relax a little, belated and absurd, when Trevor doesn't push it. It's the fact that he had to make a choice that's frozen him. If they'd stayed where they'd begun, he might have nodded off on Trevor's shoulder, an oblivious accident that by definition he couldn't fuck up.

Now he's still a bit of a burrito, but not quite so unnaturally coiled up on himself. "And you're probably right. It's just... a lot could still go wrong."

[atowncalledtreffy]

He snorts. “Yeah. And some of it probably will.”

What? Sypha is the optimist. Nobody comes to Trevor hoping for a positive outlook.

“But I think the most important thing you can do is keep trying to make it right.”

[draculabutbackwards]

Adrian huffs a little laugh and turns to face Trevor, cheek pillowed on his hands. "You know the stupidest thing? As far as I can tell, the whole thing, the attack on the village in the first place, was o get that shithead wizard into the castle and me distracted. Know what would have happened if he'd knocked on the damned door and asked if he could stay and talk magic for a bit? He could have walked the fuck in."

[atowncalledtreffy]

Trevor snorts.

“That’s not the stupidest thing. The stupidest thing is that we MET that shithead wizard months before and I believed his lies, didn’t even think to question how he got a key to the infinite corridor. And here I call myself a hunter. If I had just figured out his bullshit plan a few days sooner, the castle would have been fine.”

[draculabutbackwards]

"Fine, we both fucked up," Adrian says, though he still thinks Trevor did rather less of it. "That is even worse, though. There must have been a lot of planning. At no point did they think to have him knock on the door and say he knew you two? He'd have had the run of the place." Adrian was, admittedly, not quite so trusting by then, and there were a few corpses on sticks by the front steps that he fully intends for Trevor never to know about. But still. It would have worked.

[atowncalledtreffy]

“I don’t think he knew we knew each other or he’d have used that to his advantage.” Trevor shrugs a little.

“We were sort of in the middle of a fucked up situation between a town and a cult of insane priests. He just so happened to show up around the same time.”

[draculabutbackwards]

He struggles to imagine that was a secret when apparently The Alucard is rumored thousands of miles away. The people clearly had vampire allies. But maybe they were just incompetent in that single respect. His eyes flicker a bit as he processes that and finally he just nods. "Right, those."